82 - Mickaël Bethe-Selassié (1951-2020)

Mickaël Bethe-Selassié (1951-2020) Coffre visages 1986 Painted and sculpted wood, metal and papier-mâché with face motifs, signed and dated on left side H. 29 cm W. 73 cm D. 33 cm A veritable figure of contemporary African art, Mickaël Bethe-Selassié developed a self-taught artistic practice from the early 1980s. His initial training in physics and chemistry gave him a keen interest in materials, their properties and possible transformations. Papier-mâché quickly became the Ethiopian sculptor's preferred medium, which he applied to a pre-constructed frame. Color, central to his work, then comes to dress his creations. The "Coffre Visages", which we are presenting today, is emblematic of Mickaël Bethe-Selassié's work. With a style and palette reminiscent of cave paintings, the work suggests a timeless, ancestral universe, somewhere between dream and imagination. Preserved in numerous public collections and presented in the fundamental Paris noir exhibition at the Musée national d'Art moderne (Centre Pompidou) in 2025, Mickaël Bethe-Selassié's work is still too little known to the general public.